Poizner pumping $15M into campaign

California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner will announce Monday that he is putting $15 million of his own money into his Republican primary campaign for governor.

The money – set to be transferred from Poizner’s Silicon Valley-made fortune at the end of December – will bring the total sum he has contributed to just over $19 million.

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Poizner’s chief competition, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, has already given $15 million of her own cash to her campaign, and is expected to give more.

Both Poizner and Whitman have significantly more where that came from. Poizner sold his business SnapTrack – a company that made global-position chips in cell phones – to Qualcomm for nearly $1 billion in 2000. Whitman is a billionaire from her time heading eBay.

Poizner has run an aggressive campaign against Whitman, targeting the former CEO for not having been a registered voter for a period of her life and for her past praise for Van Jones, the Obama administration official ousted for his many recorded controversial remarks.

Still, Poizner has struggled to gain much traction in statewide polls, as few Californians recognize their insurance commissioner.

According to a November Rasmussen survey of 500 likely voters, 38 percent were “not sure” what they thought of Poizner when asked for their opinion of him. Twenty-six percent of those surveyed said the same about Whitman. Former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell – the third Republican vying for the gubernatorial nomination – had 39 percent of those polled saying they were not sure.

In the same poll, Whitman was running even against the leading Democrat, former Governor. and current Attorney General Jerry Brown – with both getting 41 percent. Poizner trails Brown 43-32 percent, and Campbell is down 42-33 percent.